AMD Launches World's Most Powerful Workstation Graphics Line

Today, AMD launched its latest line of workstation graphics, leading with the AMD FirePro W9000 Graphics Processing Unit -- the most powerful workstation graphics card ever created. The AMD FirePro W9000 GPU features incredible compute, increased memory bandwidth and greater multi-display support performance than the competing solution. Following closely are the AMD FirePro W8000, W7000 and W5000 workstation graphics cards, all built on the AMD Graphics Core Next Architecture, and designed to balance compute and 3D workloads efficiently for computer-aided design and engineering, and for media and entertainment (M&E) professionals.

"As professionals work with larger data sets that demand advanced visualization and complex models, they need a graphics solution that is fast, powerful, and reliable," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. "Certified for today's software applications, the new AMD FirePro workstation graphics cards bring a range of features and capabilities for professionals working in digital signage, broadcast graphics, CAD/CAE and M&E, delivering the ideal balance of power, performance and reliability at the right price point."

With the latest AMD FirePro workstation graphics offerings, graphics professionals can create more complex models and interact with them in real time, helping improve workflows and boost productivity. Through GCN and GeometryBoost, the state-of-the-art AMD FirePro W9000 workstation GPU delivers a record shattering 1.95 billon triangles per second, which is 1.5 times as great as the competitor's most powerful workstation graphics card, and up to 83 percent greater memory bandwidth than the competing solution, for outstanding application responsiveness.

"Supermicro is excited to bring the latest generation of AMD FirePro professional graphics cards first to market in our SuperWorkstations," said Don Clegg, vice president, Marketing and Business Development at Supermicro. "Our SuperWorkstations combined with FirePro deliver phenomenal 3D graphics performance and maximize workflow and productivity. Digital content creation and computer-aided design professionals will be thrilled by the accelerated performance of our combined efforts and upcoming FirePro-based solutions."

The AMD FirePro W8000 workstation GPU, features Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory support and offers category leading dual-precision compute performance, up to 2.2 times as fast as the competing solution. This helps professionals experience greater accuracy in calculations performed for structural and molecular analysis and computational fluid dynamics without impacting application performance. Not to be outdone, the AMD FirePro W7000 workstation GPU is up to five times as fast as the competing solution in single-precision compute performance, while the AMD FirePro W5000 workstation GPU is the most powerful mid-range workstation graphics card ever created, delivering significantly better resolution, memory and display output performance than the competing card.

The AMD FirePro W9000, W8000, W7000 and W5000 workstation graphics cards are optimized and certified for leading workstation applications. Additionally, these new AMD FirePro cards support PCI Express 3.0 and AMD PowerTune and AMD ZeroCore Power technologies for dynamic power management.

AMD FirePro W9000, W8000, W7000, W5000 workstation graphics cards are available via AMD resellers and are supported in Supermicro SuperWorkstations. AMD FirePro M6000, M4000 and M2000 mobile workstations graphics cards are also available via AMD resellers and are featured in new systems from HP and Dell.

Interesting AMD beat Nvidia GK110 to market with similar specs... by more than a month or more depending on when in Q4 K20 launches.

The AMD FirePro W7000 is only $899 and is slightly slower then the Quadro K10 which sells for $3,437.50+. Thats insane, especially when the W8000 is 4x faster then the K10 at only $1,599.

Guess that puts another piece to the puzzle why Nvidia left out the compute power in the GeForce line, To mark up the Quadro and Tesla line.

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Speculation mode: Dream.

Linpack or theoretical? Both Intel and AMD, as well as NVIDIA can claim whatever they want... theoretical. We prefer to discuss real numbers. In Linpack, GK110 will probably be the only part with at least 1.2TFLOPS DP, while both Phi and 7970GHz/W9000 don't have their Linpack numbers posted yet.

Atleast AMD got the advantage of GCN somewhere. This card will definitely beat the Tesla K20 in price/perf and I hope it beats it in performance too. Tesla has long held the gpgpu crown. We need more competition.

Linpack or theoretical? Both Intel and AMD, as well as NVIDIA can claim whatever they want... theoretical. We prefer to discuss real numbers. In Linpack, GK110 will probably be the only part with at least 1.2TFLOPS DP, while both Phi and 7970GHz/W9000 don't have their Linpack numbers posted yet.

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I almost choked laughing.

You quote a quote who likes to discuss real numbers and then speculates

You can hear the onslaught of "but it's clearly the drivers!" incoming right now. But that is the whole point isn't it? These cards are available to buy now and if the drivers aren't up to scratch then that is completely unacceptable in this market.

You can hear the onslaught of "but it's clearly the drivers!" incoming right now. But that is the whole point isn't it? These cards are available to buy now and if the drivers aren't up to scratch then that is completely unacceptable in this market.

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It is bad if it's "just" the drivers (which isn't exactly unlikely), but not as bad as if the cards are that bad, which makes no sense whatsoever. Driver issues are fixable.

It's possible ... that some of the applications we tested are older versions that don't take proper advantage of GCN...

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I expect that's at the root of the problem. AMD's OpenGL support has been pretty spotty, but they shouldn't have a problem in the Direct3D tests, which they clearly do. This to me could rule out drivers as the culprit, especially considering the amount of time they've had with GCN internally.